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SUN-BAKED STATEMENT: Finding a pool in the middle of a vast and arid landscape? Kind of a usual thing, right? You're driving down a two-laner through a small town, you see the fizzy-bright neon sign of a motel, and, there, underneath the sign, is a blue rectangle, complete with diving board or poolside lounge chairs. But finding that same pool less the diving board, the lounge chairs, the motel, and the entire town, not to mention the highway, is, well... less expected. Highly unusual, in fact. But artist Alfredo Barsuglia sees things rather differently. He didn't require all of those other details -- the motel, the town -- for his desert-based swimming pool, which is very far away from everything and not so easy to get to. Finding his "Social Pool," which is somewhere in the Mojave, requires a bit of time, some coordinates, some effort, the right day, and a visit to the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, which is providing a key to adventurers seeking the remote pool.

SEVEN DAYS A WEEK:The pool is out there, way out there, awaiting visitors, seven days a week through the end of September. "The GPS coordinates of 'Social Pool' as well as the key to open its mobile cover are provided by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West Hollywood." It will depend, of course, if the key is available that day, so, yep, there's the luck part. But if the fates are with you? Then you're spending the afternoon in what is surely the Golden State's most esoteric swimming hole of the moment.

BEHIND THE IDEA: The concept behind Mr. Barsuglia's desert-remote pool "embodies the massive socio-economic changes that have taken place in the last forty years." It "combines elements of the sublime and the ridiculous" and aims to have the visitor consider our "consumption and entertainment-driven lifestyle." For more on the artist's intent and the fluid ideas behind this hours-to-get-to slice of desert noir, hike this way.